Blog Posts

The process, criminal defense lawyers like to say, is the punishment. Nowhere is this so true as in the low-level criminal courts in Connecticut, known among the cognoscenti as the “GAs,” or Geographical Areas. All criminal cases make their courtside debut in the GA courts. Only the...

Anarchism is given a bad rap by folks who rarely take the trouble to understand what they are criticizing. Alexander Berkman's classic text on anarchism, The ABC of Anarchism, is a good place to start in educating the ignoratti.
Originally published in 1927 by the Vanguard Press, the volume...

April 16, 2024 – Connecticut lost a town last night, but it did not lose either territory or population. Two suburban entities simply merged into a new, larger, town: New Hamden.
“The move was inevitable, really,” said New Hamden’s first mayor,...

I was in the chambers of a judge I respect a great deal trying to reach a plea bargain in a complex case the other day. Well before trial, he made an offer of a given period of years in a case involving many alleged victims. After a trial in several of the cases, a trial in which my client was...

The lawyer was at the very least honest, even if the words he spoke were chilling.
“Does the Internal Revenue Service take the position that every time its agents search a location for documents the agents can do so in Kevlar jackets with guns drawn?” The judge was asking the...

I was startled to learn that manipulation of federal "no-fly" lists takes place simply as a means of recruiting potential informants: Young Moslem men are from time-to-time placed on the lists by federal authorities and then given a choice: Want to be treated as no threat? Then act like one. Tell...

Delaware Judge Jan Jurden just helped to destroy the market in human souls, and for that, I am grateful. She refused to send a self-confessed child rapist to prison, letting him instead walk out the courthouse door, to begin a lengthy period of probation and treatment as a sex...

A friend asked me to write something to present to new members of the bar in Alabama this week. Here it is:
You are about to embark on a career as an ambassador for other people’s sorrows. Nothing you have studied in law school has prepared you for what you will see, and for the...

A reader wrote the other day to ask whether I ever get upset with a client for lying to me. What would I do, she inquired, if a client told me he was not guilty of murder, and I later learned that he had done the crime?
The answer is simple: Nothing.
This struck her as a revelation. All...

Word that U.S. District Judge Janet Arterton will soon take senior status makes this a good time to ask Senators Richard Blumenthal and Christopher Murphy why it is that no criminal defense lawyer ever makes the cut for nomination to the federal bench. It's been so long since a defender was...